


more than the world can contain

by autoclaves



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, HIV/AIDS, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Missing Scene, all of my works are just: unbearable tenderness with a mention of Death TM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoclaves/pseuds/autoclaves
Summary: The sun has gone down completely now, rendering the room in blues and violets, and he imagines it coming up again on tomorrow. They’ll survive the night somehow.
Relationships: Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	more than the world can contain

**Author's Note:**

> god falsettos Got To Me. christian borle Got To Me. this is also inspired by photographer gideon mendel's documentation of the aids crisis in london, which you can find [here](https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/gideon-mendel-the-ward-hiv-aids/)!
> 
> all recognizable quotes are from romeo and juliet. i love queering classics it's so cathartic. 
> 
> title is from sufjan stevens' john my beloved. i agonized so much over what to call this idek anymore !!

The overhead lights of the hospital do nothing for Whizzer’s pallor or the shadows under his eyes, throwing them into stark fluorescent relief. Marvin hates them. Most days, he hates this entire hospital. He’d give anything to never have to come here again, to have Whizzer back at home laughing on their bed again.

Today is the day before Jason’s bar mitzvah. He should be helping Trina and Mendel with the preparations, but he’s bone-tired and desperately wants to see Whizzer for a while. Even if nowadays, seeing him just means sitting on the staticky plastic chair next to his bed while Whizzer sleeps in fits and starts, and occasionally wakes up coherent enough for a conversation.

This time, Whizzer comes to when Marvin is halfway through idly flipping the copy of  _ Romeo and Juliet _ found on the bedside table. 

“Marvin?” he says, voice rasping. He rubs at his eyes in short, sharp jerks.

“Whizzer, hello.” Marvin smiles at him in what he thinks is an encouraging way and leans forward in his chair. The plastic creaks. “How’re you doing?”

Whizzer ignores the question (that’s fair—Marvin asks it far too much as it is, and he isn’t sure if he wants to know the answer this time, either), gaze fastening on the cover of the book as a distraction.  _ “Romeo and Juliet?” _

“I thought it was yours. It was on the table.”

“No, it’s one of the nurses’. I remember she was telling me about studying it for class, she must have left it here when she came by earlier.”

“Ah. Should have known you wouldn’t go in for this kind of thing.”

“Heterosexuals?” Whizzer says delicately.

Marvin shoves at his shoulder. “Tragedies.”

Whizzer snorts. “We’re already living in a tragedy, my dearest Mr. Marvin.” His voice is lighthearted, but he looks away too quickly. 

He’s not wrong. Men are dropping like flies everyday, and the government doesn’t lift a finger to help. There’s whispers on the streets; gay cancer, they’re calling it. Like it’s a reckoning. Like Whizzer deserves to die like this, in a shabby hospital bed with only three working wheels and a cheap vomit-colored chair next to it, purely for the act of loving Marvin. (Marvin himself is a crime in many ways. But Whizzer, Whizzer has not done anything more than love him unreservedly.)

Marvin ducks his head to kiss him, a denial, and Whizzer bats him away. They’ve played this game before.

“C’mon, Marv. You know what’s going to happen. It’s inevitable.”

“It’s just not fair,” Marvin says, voice cracking on the last word. He’s aware he sounds like a petulant child. He  _ feels _ like one, kicking and screaming in the face of the death that lingers around this room, this area of the hospital.  _ You can’t have him. Not him, you bastard. _

They let that sink into the silence for a moment. Not much of what happens nowadays is fair. He takes Whizzer’s hand and squeezes it as tight as he dares. Proof of concept that they’re still alive, the smallest act of resistance in a hospital wing where men are being put on trial for their deaths.

Whizzer coughs. It’s a heartbreaking sound, and Marvin rubs his back through it. By the time he gets Whizzer a glass of water and readjusts the bed to let him sit up a bit more, the sun is setting. The sky outside is a subdued watery orange. 

“‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?’” Whizzer murmurs, gesturing with their joined hands at the little of the sunset that is visible from his bed, a feeble attempt at melodrama. Marvin almost laughs anyway. 

“Missed your calling as a stage actor,” he says, affection lining his words. 

“Nah, got myself a boyfriend instead. You know how it is, the old ball-and-chain.” Whizzer reaches out to touch Marvin’s face sweetly, and Marvin leans into it, closing his eyes. 

“You’d make a handsome sight on stage, Whizzer, a regular Romeo professing his love. Read some more.”

_ “You’d _ be Romeo professing his love, if anything.  _ I  _ settle for nothing less than being serenaded at the top of a tower by a beautiful man.” Whizzer obligingly takes the copy of  _ Romeo and Juliet _ , opens it at random. He lets go of Marvin’s hand to hold the book steady; Marvin hadn’t noticed the warmth until it was gone.

“‘Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-browed night / Give me my Romeo.’” He darts a grin at Marvin, but then his mouth twists, sardonic, as he reads on. “‘And when I shall die / Take him and cut him out in little stars.’”

Marvin’s throat seizes, his earlier playfulness dissipating.  _ Cut him out in little stars. _ He can’t bear to think about the other part.

“‘And he will make the face of heaven so fine.’” Whizzer smiles, a soft sad thing. He takes Marvin’s face in both of his hands, setting aside the book entirely. His fingers flit back and forth. “‘That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun,’” he finishes in a whisper, and Marvin wants to cry.

“Whizzer,” he says. (So this is love. He doesn’t know what he’ll do with it once Whizzer is gone, all this unstudied love stagnant inside his ribcage and pressed from his eyes like tears.)

“Cut him out in little stars,” Whizzer says again, lowly. 

He kisses Marvin very gently until they both run out of breath, and then the moment’s over before Marvin can so much as react. 

_ “Romeo and Juliet _ is mostly drivel, anyway. What did the Bard know about forbidden love?” 

“Love that dare not speak its name,” Marvin throws back, dazed and absentminded. He only knows the reference because Whizzer adores Lord Alfred Douglas. He wants to say something— _ I love you _ doesn’t seem right here, not after the depth of Whizzer’s earlier words, the look in his eyes as he recited them. The weight of it settles heavy and painful on his tongue.

Whizzer lets out a little sigh, which turns into a yawn that he stifles with one hand. “Go home, Marvin,” he says. “It’s nearing eight. Sleep. And eat, for God’s sake. You’re getting too thin.”

Marvin shakes his head firmly and grabs Whizzer’s hand again, the one closest to him. “I’ll stay.” It’s as close to a promise as he can make to a dying man. How much of this is selfishness, he wonders. How much of this act is for his sake alone?

“I don’t want you killing yourself for me.”  _ One of us has to make it,  _ he doesn’t say, but the implication is clear. 

“I’m not leaving you.”

They glare at each other, stubborn to the last. 

Whizzer caves first—Marvin had been counting on it. “No changing your mind, is there?”

“No.”

“Come on into the bed at least. That chair can’t be comfortable.”

He pushes back the covers of the bed as best as he can while still holding Marvin’s hand. It’s an endearing sight.

So Marvin climbs in with him, and they shift around until the long warm line of Whizzer’s body is around his. The bed is warm, Whizzer even more so. He tries to ignore the sterile hospital-smell underneath it all.

Whizzer pushes the tip of his nose into Marvin’s neck. “You’re cold,” he says. 

“Shush,” Marvin says intelligently. He’s already on the verge of falling asleep; he really is tired.

Whizzer laughs behind him, and the sound turns into a cough. It’s a sobering slap to the face. Marvin clutches at the arm around his waist until the hacking eases and Whizzer’s breathing is fitfully quiet.

“It is the east, and he is the sun,” he says quietly, all attempt at grandeur stripped away now. The sun has gone down completely now, rendering the room in blues and violets, and he imagines it coming up again on tomorrow. 

There’s a hitch of breath, a single breaking sob from behind him. Marvin falls asleep with an unknowable ache in his chest.

They’ll survive the night somehow.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @doctortwelfth


End file.
